Toward standard classification schemes for nursing language: recommendations of the American Nurses Association Steering Committee on Databases to Support Clinical Nursing Practice

Feasibility of the Omaha system for the care of children with dilated cardiomyopathy

Aim

To explore the feasibility of Omaha system theory in the care of children with dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM), which may provide a practical basis for the continuous nursing of DCM children.

Methods

A total of 1,392 records describing symptoms, signs, and nursing interventions were extracted from the medical records of 76 children suffered from DCM. Content analysis method was used to find out existent nursing problems, make precise nursing plans, and take corresponding nursing measurements according to the medical records of DCM children. Cross-mapping method was utilized to compare the conceptual consistency of the medical records and Omaha system (problem classification and intervention subsystems).

Results

Of the total 1,392 records, 1,094 (78.59%) were complete consistency, while 245 (17.60%) were partial consistency, and 53 (3.81%) were inconsistency with the Omaha system concepts. The concept matching degree of medical records and Omaha system was approximately 96.19%.

Conclusions

The Omaha system may be an effective nursing language for Chinese DCM children, which may be useful to guide nurses in the care of DCM. Further well-design studies need to fully evaluate the feasibility and effectiveness of the Omaha system in nursing children with DCM.

Application of the OMAHA System in the education of nursing students: A systematic review and narrative synthesis

AIM

The aim of this systematic review was to synthesize evidence on the application of the Omaha System in the education of nursing students and to provide advice for educators to apply the Omaha System to practice and research effectively and meaningfully.

BACKGROUND

It is a necessary part of nursing education to provide students with informatics experience. The Omaha System is a standardized nursing terminology designed to enhance practice, documentation, and information management.

DESIGN

A systematic review and narrative synthesis.

METHODS

Studies from eight databases (PubMed, Web of Science, Embase, CINAHL, PsycINFO, China Biology Medicine disc, CNKI, Wanfang Data) were systematically retrieved. Twenty-three articles were found and synthesized.

RESULTS

Existing studies showed that the Omaha System was mainly applied in student community practice as a tool for guiding practice and collecting information, and the practice data were used by educators to analyse the outcomes of nursing education. Recently, the Omaha System was introduced into the classroom environment and achieved positive results in terms of teaching. Students' feedback on the use of the Omaha System was generally positive.

CONCLUSIONS

The Omaha System can be an active teaching and learning tool for nursing education, and further research is needed to explore and realize its potential in the field of education.

Classifying Perinatal Advanced Practice Data With the Omaha System

This pilot study analyzed perinatal advanced practice registered nurse (APRN) diagnoses/client problems and interventions across sites using standardized terminology. APRN verbatim encounter logs from 8 patients in a previous study were coded by both the Omaha System and Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) codes. Previous outcomes were reduced preterm births, hospitalizations, and costs (Brooten et al., 2001). In 597 encounters (63% by telephone), 27 diagnoses and 8,077 interventions were recorded. Health Teaching, Guidance, and Counseling were 42%; Surveillance, 38%; Treatments and Procedures, 11%; and Case Management, 9%. Health Teaching, Guidance, and Counseling were most frequent in clinic (51%) and phone encounters (45%). Surveillance was 30% to 35% at each site. Treatments and Procedures occurred most frequently in home and clinic visits, whereas Case Management occurred most in clinic and phone visits. When coded with CPT, more than 80% of interventions were unlisted. Documentation using standardized terminology would facilitate the study of effective nursing interventions.

Oncology Nursing Minimum Data Set (ONMDS): can we hypothesize a set of prevalent Nursing Sensitive Outcomes (NSO) in cancer patients?

Background

The nursing minimum data set (NMDS) was created in 1977 in the United States to collect uniform standardised data that could be comparable among different nursing areas or patients. So far, in the literature, an NMDS in an oncology setting has not yet been described. Considering an oncology nursing minimum data set (ONMDS), which data could be chosen to define this tool regarding cancer patient care?

Material and methods

At the European Institute of Oncology (IEO), 20 experienced oncology nurses representing surgical, medical, and critical areas participated in a nursing record working group. All nurses followed an educational course on NMDS, and they shared clinical experiences to find which data common among different areas could be useful to care. To identify these data, nurses considered three issues: what is nursing care for nurses in the IEO? What is the nurses’ responsibility in the IEO? What is the organisational nursing model in the IEO? Nurses in the IEO are autonomous in decision making and recognised by patients and by a multi-professional team; the organisational nursing model is primary nursing with patient-centred care. Nursing data must therefore show the quality and results of this care. With this in mind, the working group decided to orient the ONMDS toward nursing-sensitive outcomes (NSOs), meeting also with psychologists, physiotherapists, and dieticians. Nurses analysed Oncology Nursing Society outcomes, and through focus groups, experiential meetings, role playing, and case studies, they integrated them with other NSOs.

Results

The ONMDS is composed of 49 NSOs recognised as the most common and frequent oncologic outcomes regardless of the treatment that the patient undergoes. These outcomes were clustered into 15 categories. The categories are: gastrointestinal outcomes, genitourinary outcomes, respiratory outcomes, skin outcomes, fluid and electrolyte balance outcomes, neurological outcomes, security, functional status, vascular access outcomes, nutritional status, pain, psychosocial discomfort, activities of daily living (ADL), instrumental activities daily living (IADL), and self-care outcomes.

Conclusions

Efforts to identify an ONMDS based on NSOs allow us to develop an tool that can standardise language, assessment, and intervention, but overall could be used to measure nursing care. To evaluate these potentialities, the ONMDS was introduced into nursing records, and it was tested with a pre–post research study.

Nursing audit as a method for developing nursing care and ensuring patient safety

Nursing documentation is crucial to high quality, good and safe nursing care. According to earlier studies nursing documentation varies and the nursing classifications used in electronic patient records (EPR) is not yet stable internationally nor nationally. Legislation on patient records varies between countries, but they should contain accurate, high quality information for assessing, planning and delivering care. A unified national model for documenting patient care would improve information flow, management between multidisciplinary care teams and patient safety. Nursing documentation quality, accuracy and development needs can be monitored through an auditing instrument developed for the national documentation model. The results of the auditing process in one university hospital suggest that the national nursing documentation model fulfills nurses' expectations of electronic tools, facilitating their important documentation duty. This paper discusses the importance of auditing nursing documentation and especially of giving feedback after the implementation of a new means of documentation, to monitor the progress of documentation and further improve nursing documentation.

Indeterminacy and technicality revisited: how medicine and nursing have responded to the evidence based movement

In 1970 sociologists Jamous and Peloille proposed that occupational work could be understood as a combination of technical activity and indeterminate judgment and that the professions were characterised by high levels of indeterminacy relative to technicality. They argued that groups with low status or on the fringes of powerful professional groups were more likely to promote technically based reform, whereas elites were likely to resist with assertions of indeterminacy. Subsequent writers claimed that their notion of the indeterminacy/technicality ratio was more useful in analysis of professional ideology than in examinations of work content. During the 1990s the evidence based movement exerted a strong influence within the healthcare professions. Medicine and nursing responded in ways that reflected their differing status; however, both reactions included assertions that evidence based practice(EBP) could not take into account the subtle expertise required in daily clinical decision making. This paper argues that Jamous and Peloille's theories about technical reform and professional elites can help to explain responses to EBP. EBP was initially promoted by a relatively low-status speciality of medicine while nursing, as an emerging profession, has shown more enthusiasm for its activities being formalised in a technically based fashion.

A brief history of nursing informatics in the United States of America

From the beginning of modern nursing, data from standardized patient records were seen as a potentially powerful resource for assessing and improving the quality of care. As nursing informatics began to evolve in the second half of the 20th century, the lack of standards for language and data limited the functionality and usefulness of early applications. In response, nurses developed standardized languages, but until the turn of the century, neither they nor anyone else understood the attributes required to achieve computability and semantic interoperability. Collaboration across disciplines and national boundaries has led to the development of standards that meet these requirements, opening the way for powerful information tools. Many challenges remain, however. Realizing the potential of nurses to transform and improve health care and outcomes through informatics will require fundamental changes in individuals, organizations, and systems. Nurses are developing and applying informatics methods and tools to discover knowledge and improve health from the molecular to the global level and are seeking the collective wisdom of interdisciplinary and interorganizational collaboration to effect the necessary changes. NOTE: Although this article focuses on nursing informatics in the United States, nurses around the world have made substantial contributions to the field. This article alludes to a few of those advances, but a comprehensive description is beyond the scope of the present work.

Integrating preventive care and nursing standardized terminologies in nursing education: a case study

This study investigated the development of a community-focused curriculum integrating primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention and nursing standardized terminologies as an organizing infrastructure. This is a case study of the curriculum redesign of the Marcella Niehoff School of Nursing, Loyola University Chicago. Faculty developed a conceptual framework integrating core concepts into curriculum design, course content, and clinical applications. A coherent curriculum was designed using a community-focused approach; primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention strategies; and standardized terminologies as the organizing infrastructure to teach and apply nursing practice. The curriculum provides a meaningful correlation between the classroom and clinical experience. Students journey with their patients throughout the health care experience, applying nursing concepts using standardized terminologies. Clinical experiences provide students with the opportunity to transfer knowledge to the health experiences of patients in their care. Patient encounters, whether at the primary, secondary, or tertiary level of prevention, are used to assist students in developing critical thinking skills through the use of standardized nursing terminologies.

Mapping parish nurse documentation into the nursing interventions classification: a research method

Mapping, or linking like terms that represent the same concept, is a research method increasingly used for testing the reliability and validity of standardized taxonomies. For mapping to be useful, it is critical that the procedure is reliable. One way to maximize reliability is to develop standardized mapping procedures, or rules to follow when linking the terms. This article will present a standardized mapping procedure method in a study that mapped narrative parish nurse documentation (170 health records, 1607 interactions) into the Nursing Interventions Classification (NIC), yielding an intercoder reliability kappa of 0.92. The mapping process identified conceptual issues in the NIC, which also are presented. Because the NIC is included in the Systematic Nomenclature of Medicine of Clinical Terms (SNOMED CT), these conceptual issues raised data aggregation issues in SNOMED CT. Those issues are also presented.

Nursing and the informatics revolution

The Institute of Medicine's quality initiatives have collectively emphasized the importance of information technology to the transformation of health care. Not coincidentally, federal initiatives in 2004 have signaled the start of "the decade of health information technology." Building on those reports, this article describes the informatics revolution in process, and nursing's readiness to move in that direction. The promise of informatics in reshaping practice is sketched out in terms of seven aims for improvement, followed by a listing of some of the issues that must be addressed for nursing to realize those possibilities. In similar fashion, changes in academia are discussed both in terms of the promise of informatics applications and the barriers to achieving that preferred future. The article ends with some policy recommendations and reflections on opportunities at hand, particularly the growing emphasis on patient self-management support.

Clinical care costing method for the Clinical Care Classification System

PURPOSE

To provide a means for calculating the cost of nursing care using the Clinical Care Classification System (CCCS).

DATA SOURCES

Three CCCS indicators of care components, actions, and outcomes in conjunction with Clinical Care Pathways (CCPs).

DATA SYNTHESIS

The cost of patient care is based on the type of action time multiplied by care components and nursing costs.

CONCLUSIONS

The CCCM for the CCCS makes it possible to measure and cost out clinical practice.

IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE

The CCCM may be used with CCPs in the electronic patient medical record. The CCPs make it easy to track the clinical nursing care across time, settings, population groups, and geographical locations. Collected data may be used many times, allowing for improved documentation, analysis, and costing out of care.

The Nursing Terminology Summit Conferences: a case study of successful collaboration for change

The Nursing Terminology Summit, a series of invitational conferences and ongoing collaboration, has played both initiating and contributing roles to bring about a second-order change in the development and integration of standards for nursing terminology. What factors enabled this success? What factors made change difficult? This paper examines the structure and process of the Nursing Terminology Summit using concepts, principles, theories, and strategies identified in Lorenzi and Riley [Organizational Aspects of Health Informatics: Managing Technological Change, Springer, 1995]. As a case study, this critical analysis offers practical lessons for informaticians in managing change across disciplinary, organizational, and national boundaries.

Measuring the Domain Completeness of the Nursing Interventions Classification in Parish Nurse Documentation

As the healthcare industry moves toward automating the patient record, care providers have been challenged to capture their domain of practice in a computerized format. Nurses have responded by developing a number of American Nurses Association (ANA) recognized nursing standardized terminologies. This study measured the domain completeness and uses of one such terminology, the Nursing Interventions Classification (NIC), within the specialty of parish nursing, a spiritually focused, community-based practice. Documentation samples from 170 health records submitted by 13 parish nurses in 7 sites across the country, stratified by urban, suburban, and rural sites were used. The nursing interventions that were documented in 1607 unique interactions in these charts were mapped into NIC using standardized mapping procedures. Intercoder reliability was assessed, with a final kappa of 0.92 (93% agreement) and code-recode reliability with a kappa of 0.72 (74% agreement). Overall, 93% of the 3059 interventions mapped into NIC. Recommended modifications in existing NIC labels and additional NIC labels are presented. The results suggest that NIC supports the documentation of parish nursing practice and has the capability of capturing the spiritual dimension of care.

Determining sources for formal nursing terminology systems

OBJECTIVE

The purpose of this study is to assess the relative merits of aspects--labels or informal definitions--of traditional nursing terminology systems as the foundational sources for target formal nursing terminology systems.

DESIGN

This study builds upon and compares the findings of two previous experiments in which formal terminology systems, one based on informal definitions, the other based on labels, were developed under the GALEN approach and used to generate hierarchies of nursing interventions drawn from the Nursing Interventions Classification.

MEASUREMENTS

The two generated hierarchies were compared to see whether, and to what extent, they captured a test set of hierarchical relationships implicit within and derived from the Nursing Interventions Classification. An analysis of the relevant conceptual representations was carried out in those cases where a hierarchical relationship from the test set was absent from either of the generated hierarchies.

RESULTS

The hierarchy generated from the formal terminology system based on informal definitions contained none of the test set of hierarchical relationships. Reasons included structural differences between conceptual representations; different levels of specificity; and deficiencies within the formal terminology system itself. The hierarchy generated from the formal terminology system based on labels contained all but one of the test set. The reason for the one absence was inconsistent usage within source and target.

CONCLUSIONS

While it may be possible to derive formal terminology systems from informal definitions for nursing interventions, the inherent complexity within those informal definitions brings into question the utility of such systems. This study demonstrates that it may be more productive to base formal nursing terminology systems on labels, simpler sources with limited discursive content and a higher degree of consistency.

Statistical analysis of the nursing minimum data set for The Netherlands

The purpose of this overview is to examine and illustrate the feasible options for the statistical analysis of nursing minimum data sets (NMDSs). After explaining the need for these data collections, examples from different countries are discussed and examples of the methods used for statistical analysis are summarized. Distinct purposes for information uses and for the presentation of information requires different approaches for data collection and statistical analysis. The feasible options for the nursing minimum data set for the Netherlands (NMDSN) have been described to illustrate the different methods available. Six studies are discussed, illustrating their goals, data collection methods, data analysis, and results. These studies include visualizing nursing care by means of frequencies of nursing diagnoses and interventions, RIDIT (relative to an identified distribution) analysis, fingerprints, and graphs from multidimensional scaling techniques. In addition, using data sets for workload measurement and testing of instruments is presented. The overview ends with general recommendations for data collection and analysis of NMDSs.

Surveillance as a nursing intervention: use in community nursing centers

The purpose of this multisite retrospective descriptive study was to describe the nature of surveillance as a nursing intervention within 3 urban community nursing centers (CNCs). Secondary analysis of clinical data was conducted for clients seen in 1995. The CNCs used the Automated Community Health Information System (Lundeen & Friedbacher, 1994), a relational database. Nursing diagnoses and interventions were described according to the Omaha Classification System (Martin & Scheet, 1992b). The sample included 1,506 unduplicated clients who received care during 5,248 encounters and was characterized by more adults 20 years and older (56.1%), women (71.0%), and African Americans (77.2%). The age range of the clients was infancy to 95 years (M = 29.90 years). Surveillance was a significant nursing intervention making up 27.1% of all interventions (7,557 of 27,898), and 68.5% of the clients received surveillance. There was a significant relation between the provision of surveillance and age range, chi 2 (5, N = 1,427) = 211.96, p < or = .001, V = .385, and gender, chi 2 (1, N = 1,501) = 17.90, p < or = .001, phi = .109. Clients who were 40 years and older and who were women were more likely to receive surveillance. Surveillance was provided most often for the diagnoses of circulation and nutrition. Health promotion and disease prevention diagnoses were more likely to prompt surveillance. The provision of surveillance was linked to age and developmental risk factors.

Evaluating quality of nursing care: the gap between theory and practice

The purpose of this article is to determine whether nursing practice, as judged by nurse peer reviewers, varies by type or location of hospital and to assess which aspects of practice tend to be most at variance with nursing theory. This article provides a framework of continued quality assessment and improvement that is based on prior research. Trained nurse peer reviewers carried out structured implicit review, which utilized their professional judgment to evaluate the process of nursing care for patients admitted to acute hospitals with heart failure or cerebrovascular accident. Findings show significant variations in the quality of nursing care and support the continued development of nursing quality assessment and improvement initiatives directed at reducing the gap between nursing theory and practice.

Collaborative efforts for representing nursing concepts in computer-based systems: international perspectives

Current nursing terminology efforts have converged toward meeting the demand for a reference terminology for nursing concepts by building on the foundation of existing interface and administrative terminologies and by collaborating with terminology efforts across the spectrum of health care. In this article, the authors illustrate how collaboration is promoting convergence toward a reference terminology for nursing by briefly summarizing a wide range of exemplary activities. These include: 1) the International Classification of Nursing Practice (ICNP) activities of the International Council of Nurses (ICN), 2) work in Brazil and Korea that has contributed to, and been stimulated by, ICNP developments, 3) efforts in the United States to improve understanding of the different types of terminologies needed in nursing and to promote harmonization and linking among them, and 4) current nursing participation in major multi-disciplinary standards initiatives. Although early nursing terminology work occurred primarily in isolation and resulted in some duplicative efforts, the activities summarized in this article demonstrate a tremendous level of collaboration and convergence not only in the discipline of nursing but in multi-disciplinary standards initiatives. These efforts are an important prerequisite for ensuring that nursing concepts are represented in computer-based systems in a manner that facilitates multi-purpose use at local, national, regional, and international levels.

Standardized nursing vocabularies: a foundation for quality care

OBJECTIVES

To describe the importance of standardized nursing vocabularies as a foundation for quality in health care decision-making.

DATA SOURCES

Literature, online sources, and committee documents.

CONCLUSIONS

Several standardized vocabularies are recognized by the American Nurses Association Committee for Nursing Practice Information Infrastructure. Vendors also have integrated the vocabularies into their information systems. Future efforts include developing an international nursing reference terminology.

IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING PRACTICE

Oncology nurses face quality of care issues that impact decision-making at the point of care. To describe their practice, oncology nurses must strive to use nursing data that are standardized, documented, and made visible by inclusion in computer-based systems.

Standards for nursing terminology

Terminology work in nursing has given rise to an increasing number of nursing terminologies. These generally take the form of controlled vocabularies. Because of the limitations of the controlled vocabulary approach, individual terminologies tend to be tuned to meet the specific needs of their intended users. Differences between terminologies are now a significant barrier to the comparison and interchange of health information. To agree on a single, multipurpose terminology would be problematic. However, several options for resolving unnecessary differences between nursing terminologies are currently being explored by international standards bodies and other groups, such as the U.S. Nursing Vocabulary Summit. One such option is the use of a terminology model to facilitate evolution toward a more coherent range of terminologies. The authors describe the motivation behind the development of a standard for nursing terminologies. They explain how a terminology model might form the basis for such a standard through a description of the approach taken by CEN TC251 (the Health Informatics Technical Committee of the European Committee for Standardization). They also discuss possible limitations of standardization.

A database to describe the practice component of the CNS role

The purpose of this paper is to describe the development of the database and its usefulness in describing clinical nurse specialist (CNS) practice, providing the CNS with clinical information about specific patients, and identifying patterns and trends about the care for the specialty patient population during a 3-month pilot period. The pilot revealed that the database, which included elements of clinical encounters between the CNS and patients, was useful in organizing clinical information about patients and the specialty population and in describing the nature of the CNS practice. It provided a quantitative description of the process of CNS functioning that, when combined with data about actions and outcomes, will allow relations to be drawn. The organizing framework of the database may be replicated by CNSs who are interested in describing the nature of their clinical practice.

Patient problems and nurse interventions during acute care and discharge planning

Standardization and computerization of medical documentation has provided a method to describe patient care by naming and linking patients' needs with nursing interventions. This study used a standardized nursing classification system to describe the types and frequency of problems experienced by elders hospitalized and discharged to home and the interventions used by staff nurses and advanced practice nurses (APNs) as they provided acute care and discharge planning for these cardiac patients. The patients' hospital records and the APN logs were content analyzed and then coded using the Problem Classification Scheme and Intervention Scheme of the Omaha System. Patients experienced an average of 8.6 problems that required a total of 7,000 interventions in all four Omaha System intervention categories. The results provided a description of the most frequent problems experienced by the patients linked with the most common nursing interventions. The nature, complexity, and prevalence of patient problems and the importance of communication across settings are evident. In addition, the study findings increase understanding of the contribution of nurses to the care of hospitalized elders as they make the transition from hospital to home.

Talking about patients: communication and continuity of care

Continuity of patient care is a tenet of professional nursing practice regardless of setting. Communication between providers about patients is fundamental to continuity. As the role of hospitals in health care is constrained, care is now commonly delivered to patients during an episode of illness by multiple agencies. Continuity of care now assumes full communication between providers about patients' conditions and needs. Research provides evidence about the dynamics of patient care communication: more lean (background and medical) than rich (nursing care and psychosocial) data are communicated; structured, written formats transmit more information than informal channels of communication; and organizational and patient characteristics would appear to affect communication about patients. Knowledge about the communication dynamics of patient care may assist providers in designing strategies to attain the basic goals of continuity of care.

Application of the Omaha System in acute care

Although effective as a standardized language for documentation in community and public health settings, the Omaha System has not been evaluated in acute care settings. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the utility of the Omaha System to code the terms used by nurses when documenting hospital care. The nursing documentation in 30 hospital records was content analyzed for signs and symptoms, patient problems, and nursing interventions, then coded into the categories of the Omaha System. Degree of match was evaluated using concept match scores, and utility was determined using empirical, operational, and pragmatic criteria. Study findings suggest several strengths (i.e., high reliability, coded 97% of the problems, easy to use) and some limitations (lack of mutual exclusivity among terms, lack of semantic clarity, the need for three new problems). This study has important implications in demonstrating the utility of the Omaha System for possible expansion into acute care to standardize communication between the hospital setting and home care.

Terminology standards for nursing: collaboration at the summit

OBJECTIVE

The objective of the 1999 Nursing Vocabulary Summit Conference was to seek consensus on and a common approach to the development of nursing terminology standards for use in information systems.

METHODS

A four-day invitational conference brought together authors and representatives of responsible organizations concerned with the nursing terminologies recognized or under consideration by the American Nurses Association, along with experts on language and standards and representatives of professional organizations, federal agencies, and the health informatics industry.

RESULTS

Participants distinguished between colloquial terminologies and reference terminologies, and between information models and terminology models. They agreed that most recognized nursing terminologies were colloquial terminologies and that a reference terminology was needed. They formed task forces to develop and test aspects of a reference terminology model prior to a second meeting in June 2000, at which they would determine readiness to collaborate on a single international standard.

DISCUSSION

The 1999 Nursing Vocabulary Summit Conference changed the level of discussion about nursing vocabulary standards from a debate about the relative merits of the various terminologies recognized in the United States to an examination of methods for developing and testing a reference terminology model and, eventually, a reference terminology that could serve as an international standard.

Discipline-based approaches to evidence-based practice: a view from nursing

BACKGROUND

Research carried out by nurses or by others on patient problems of concern to nurses is contributing to the development of evidence-based nursing practice. In the past few decades, there has been a dramatic increase in clinical research, in health services research, and in the content and process of informatics, all focused on nursing care. The translation of findings of this research into clinical practice and the organization of nursing is less dramatic. The opportunity to implement research-based practice is great, but requires attention, methods, and resources. Also required are a database and an information system which include terms essential to nursing practice. DIMENSIONS OF NURSES' INVOLVEMENT IN EVIDENCE-BASED PRACTICE: The importance of nurses' involvement in evidence-based practice (EBP) can be viewed from three perspectives: (1) nurses' participation in medical problems and medical interventions, (2) nursing problems and nursing interventions, and (3) development and use of a standardized language that describes the problems, interventions, and outcomes important to nursing.

APPLYING EBP TO COMBINED MEDICAL AND NURSING PROBLEMS

The best outcomes for a specific patient population are achieved through a combination of the medical and nursing problems and evidence-based interventions. Examples of problems of importance to nursing practice and research include pain, dehydration, incontinence, lifestyle change, confusion, immobility, knowledge deficit, noncompliance, anxiety, skin breakdown, inappropriate use of restraints, and falls. Interventions for prevention and treatment of the individual problem or combination of problems comprise the focus of nursing research and EBP.

Mapping nursing diagnosis nomenclatures for coordinated care

PURPOSE

To map the problem or diagnosis terms from three nomenclatures, term to term, to determine commonalities and differences; and to determine whether it is possible to develop a single vocabulary that contains the best features of all. When different nomenclatures are used in different settings, continuity of care is hampered by the need to re-state problems and interventions.

DESIGN

The sample for this descriptive analysis was 396 terms from three nursing diagnosis and problem nomenclatures recognized by the American Nurses Association: the North American Nursing Diagnosis Association (NANDA) Approved List, the Home Health Care Classification (HHCC), and the Omaha System.

METHOD

Terms from each of the three nomenclatures were mapped to terms in each of the others. Consensus methods were used to resolve differences in mapping decisions. Terms were characterized as "Same," "Similar," "Broader," "Narrower," and "No Match." Validation of consistency and accuracy was done by reverse mapping, use of syllogisms, use of taxonomic groupings, and expert review.

RESULTS

Of 396 terms, 21 concepts accounting for 63 terms were found to be the same or similar in all three nomenclatures; 91 terms were unique to the nomenclature in which they were found ("No Match"). The remaining 242 terms had a narrower or broader relationship to at least one term in another nomenclature. In all three nomenclatures, inconsistencies existed in level of abstractness of the diagnosis or problem terms, and in definition and placement of terms within their own taxonomic structure.

CONCLUSION

Because of differences in structure and incompatible taxonomic arrangements, a master list of "preferred terms" taken from the three nomenclatures is not feasible. However, the mappings are useful for determining commonalities and the unique contributions of each nomenclature, which can facilitate the development of a uniform language for nursing diagnoses. The mapping can also form the basis for automatic translation of computer-stored nursing diagnoses from one setting to another when different nomenclatures are used.

The ICNP's relevance in the US

Efforts to develop an International Classification for Nursing Practice (ICNP) were initiated nearly a decade ago. To update nurses on progress, below is a critical review of the ICNP using the Computer-based Patient Record Institute (CPRI) Features Framework and a discussion of its relevance to current US efforts: 1) the activities of the American Nurses' Association (ANA) Steering Committee on Databases To Support Clinical Nursing Practice; 2) implementation of formal approaches for representing nursing concepts and 3) Health Level 7 standards.

A review of major nursing vocabularies and the extent to which they have the characteristics required for implementation in computer-based systems

Building on the work of previous authors, the Computer-based Patient Record Institute (CPRI) Work Group on Codes and Structures has described features of a classification scheme for implementation within a computer-based patient record. The authors of the current study reviewed the evaluation literature related to six major nursing vocabularies (the North American Nursing Diagnosis Association Taxonomy 1, the Nursing Interventions Classification, the Nursing Outcomes Classification, the Home Health Care Classification, the Omaha System, and the International Classification for Nursing Practice) to determine the extent to which the vocabularies include the CPRI features. None of the vocabularies met all criteria. The Omaha System, Home Health Care Classification, and International Classification for Nursing Practice each included five features. Criteria not fully met by any systems were clear and non-redundant representation of concepts, administrative cross-references, syntax and grammar, synonyms, uncertainty, context-free identifiers, and language independence.

A comparison of nursing minimal data sets

It is often argued that Nursing Minimal Data Sets (NMDSs) have advantages for the nursing profession. The NMDSs that have been developed and applied in some countries have many features in common, but there are differences in purpose, content, sampling, collection approach, and developmental stage as well. This paper examines the advantages and disadvantages of data sets of nursing practice, and the differences and similarities of five national and international NMDS systems. The purpose is to apply this information toward an NMDS initiative in the Netherlands. Future initiatives in NMDS development should include international coordination.

Evaluation of the Unified Medical Language System as a medical knowledge source

OBJECTIVE

The authors evaluated the use of the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) as a medical knowledge source for the representation of medical procedures in the MAOUSSC system.

DESIGN

MAOUSSC, a multiaxial coding system, was used for the representation of 1500 procedures from 15 clinical specialties, using UMLS concepts (augmented by full sources for three new vocabularies being added to the UMLS) and relationships whenever possible. Evaluation criteria for the UMLS included (1) completeness of representation of concepts and of inter-concept relationships, (2) consistency in the categorization of both concepts and inter-concept relationships, and (3) usability, including adaptability of the UMLS to a foreign language (French), its suitability to a geographic region with different medical practices than the USA, and issues relative to the annual update changes in the test vocabularies.

RESULTS

During the MAOUSSC trial, the number of missing concepts or relationships identified in the augmented UMLS sources was deemed to be inconsequential relative to overall project goals. "Missing" UMLS inter-concept relationships were identified, although they were small in number. Some inconsistencies in the UMLS were noted, especially in the area of hierarchic relationships.

CONCLUSION

After UMLS was used for five years as a knowledge source for representing 1500 complex medical procedures in MAOUSSC, its value is considered significant. Future editions of the UMLS are expected to improve representation of inter-concept relationships and global consistency.

Modeling nursing terminology using the GRAIL representation language

OBJECTIVE

The purpose of the study is to explore the use of formal systems to model nursing terminology.

DESIGN

GRAIL is a formal, compositional terminologic language, closely related to frame-based systems and conceptual graphs, which allows concepts to be formed from atomic-level primitives and automatically classified in a multiple hierarchy. A formal model of the alpha version of the International Classification for Nursing Practice (ICNP) classification of nursing interventions was constructed in GRAIL.

MEASUREMENTS

The model was analyzed for completeness, coherence, clarity, expressiveness, usefulness, and maintainability.

RESULTS

GRAIL is capable of representing the complete set of atomic-level concepts within the ICNP as well as certain cross-mappings to other vocabularies. It also has the potential to represent many more concepts, to an arbitrary level of detail.

CONCLUSIONS

Formal systems such as GRAIL can overcome many of the difficulties associated with traditional nursing vocabularies without restricting the level of detail needed to describe nursing care.

Nursing classification systems: necessary but not sufficient for representing "what nurses do" for inclusion in computer-based patient record systems

Our premise is that from the perspective of maximum flexibility of data usage by computer-based record (CPR) systems, existing nursing classification systems are necessary, but not sufficient, for representing important aspects of "what nurses do." In particular, we have focused our attention on those classification systems that represent nurses' clinical activities through the abstraction of activities into categories of nursing interventions. In this theoretical paper, we argue that taxonomic, combinatorial vocabularies capable of coding atomic-level nursing activities are required to effectively capture in a reproducible and reversible manner the clinical decisions and actions of nurses, and that, without such vocabularies and associated grammars, potentially important clinical process data is lost during the encoding process. Existing nursing intervention classification systems do not fulfill these criteria. As background to our argument, we first present an overview of the content, methods, and evaluation criteria used in previous studies whose focus has been to evaluate the effectiveness of existing coding and classification systems. Next, using the Ingenerf typology of taxonomic vocabularies, we categorize the formal type and structure of three existing nursing intervention classification system--Nursing Interventions Classification, Omaha System, and Home Health Care Classification. Third, we use records from home care patients to show examples of lossy data transformation, the loss of potentially significant atomic data, resulting from encoding using each of the three systems. Last, we provide an example of the application of a formal representation methodology (conceptual graphs) which we believe could be used as a model to build the required combinatorial, taxonomic vocabulary for representing nursing interventions.

South Dakota statewide Nursing Minimum Data Set Project

The elements of the Nursing Minimum Data Set (NMDS) were collected manually from 188 medical records in eight acute care facilities. These eight facilities represent 54 per cent of the beds in South Dakota. The purpose of the study was to describe discharge destination, nursing diagnoses, nursing interventions, and nursing resource utilization for patients with fractured femur with pinning. The sample was primarily female (69.1 per cent), with a mean age of 78.5 years. Most (84.0 per cent) patients were transferred to another facility, with 46.2 per cent going to extended care facilities. The most frequent nursing diagnoses were comfort (89.9 per cent) and physical mobility (59.6 per cent). Interventions were classified using the 16-category classification scheme developed by Werley and Lang. The most frequently recorded types of interventions were in the category of monitoring and/or surveillance (16.7 per cent of 7,555 interventions), whereas emotional support and/or counseling was much less frequent (3.0 per cent of 7,555). Discharge planning was the most frequent nursing intervention in the category of coordination and collaboration of care (54.8 per cent of 188 patients). Documentation systems have been structured to accommodate technical tasks on flow sheets, for example. Nursing resource utilization was the most difficult, and also presently the least meaningful, NMDS element to collect because each facility has different staffing, different patient classification systems, and no prescribed method for collecting these data. Manual data collection is time-consuming and expensive and therefore not recommended.

Documenting 'what nurses do'--moving beyond coding and classification

A variety of strategies for knowledge representation have been applied to the texts from a number of medical domains. Many of the techniques rely on the well-defined ways in which medical terms are used within a given domain, a phenomenon referred to as 'sublanguage.' Because much of nursing documentation involves the use of 'everyday' language, the viable application of sublanguage-based approaches to knowledge representation of nursing documentation is not a forgone conclusion. We propose an approach utilizing semantic markup of nursing notes as a strategy for determining whether the documentation of 'what nurses do' is a sublanguage Results of an initial feasibility study utilizing the approach are presented.

Comparison of nursing interventions classification and current procedural terminology codes for categorizing nursing activities

PURPOSE

To compare the frequency with which nursing activity terms could be categorized using Nursing Interventions Classification (NIC) and Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) codes.

DESIGN

Descriptive. The sample was 201 patients with AIDS hospitalized 1989-1992 for pneumocystis carinii pneumonia in three US medical centers.

METHODS

Nursing activity terms (n = 21,366) were collected from patient interviews, nurse interviews, intershift reports, and patient records, then were categorized using NIC and CPT codes.

RESULTS

Nursing activity terms were categorized into 80 NIC interventions across 22 classes and into 15 CPT codes. All terms in the data set were classifiable using the NIC system and the majority (60%) of the terms were classified into 14 NIC intervention categories; 6% of the terms were classifiable by CPT codes. The most frequently used CPT code was "pulse oximetry." Significantly (p < .0001) greater numbers of nursing activity terms could be categorized in the NIC system compared to the CPT system.

CONCLUSIONS

Findings provide evidence that NIC is superior to CPT for categorizing nursing activities in this study's population. The findings support the importance of discipline-specific classifications for categorization of health care interventions. Nursing-specific intervention classification systems such as NIC, the Omaha System, and the Home Health Care Classification are essential to defining the contribution of nursing to both quality and cost outcomes.

Nursing intervention classification systems

PURPOSE

To analyze the features, development, and research of the Omaha System, the Iowa Nursing Intervention Classification, and the Home Health Care Classification and provide a critical review of the unique components of each.

ORGANIZING FRAMEWORK

Five elements: achievement of original purpose, language used, ease of computerizing format, clinical utility, and linkage of the Nursing Minimum Data set (NMDS) nursing care elements.

CONCLUSIONS

Further testing and development of nursing classification systems should be done to determine the general value of nursing classification, the extent to which the original goals and purposes of classification are met, and to identify the unique features and contributions of each system. Further testing is important to determine the strengths, weaknesses, and applicability of the various systems for capturing the elements of the NMDS for different care settings, care givers, and patient populations.

IMPLICATIONS

Nursing classification may eventually lead to naming and describing the work of nurses. Research findings will continue to provide information leading to a unified nursing language system that describes the practice of nursing in local, regional, national, and international health-care data sets used for research, clinical, education, policy, and administrative purposes.

Using computerized clinical nursing data bases for nursing research

Computerized clinical nursing data bases (CCNDBs) have significant potential as sources of data for research on the processes and outcomes of nursing care. The emergence of nurse-managed practice sites, in which patient care is driven predominantly by nurses' decisions, has prompted renewed interest in using data from these practices to answer questions that are important to nurses. The purpose of this article is to articulate strategies for using CCNDBs for nursing research. Recognition of the differences between clinical and research data bases is essential. The steps involved in obtaining and using computerized clinical data can be grouped into three phases: (1) locating and accessing CCNDBs, (2) assessing the content and quality of the data, and (3) extracting and analyzing the data. Processes involved in phase 1 include determining the research question, identifying eligible CCNDBs, negotiating access to the CCNDB, and ensuring the privacy and confidentiality of subjects. In phase 2 the processes include determining the content of the candidate CCNDBs, assessing the quality of the data in candidate CCNDBs, and determining the technical usability of data in candidate CCNDBs. Phase 3 involves mapping CCNDB data elements to research variables; determining data and record selection criteria; writing and implementing a query to select the desired records; designing a data base and record structure for research variables; performing analytic procedures on the research data; and reporting results of the research. Phases and procedures are discussed in detail in the article.

Using elements of the nursing minimum data set for determining outcomes

To measure the contribution of nursing activities to patient outcome achievement requires a standardized language for documentation and retrieval of critical data elements. This pilot study explored the utilization of elements of the Nursing Minimum Data Set (NMDS) in a sample of patients undergoing parathyroidectomy. Results support the importance of nursing management's role in creating reliable systems that capture the critical elements of care delivery. The successful use of any system for documentation and for research will be dependent on education of the staff in the various taxonomies being used.

Standardized nursing classification systems: necessary, but not sufficient, for representing what nurses do

The American Nurses Association Steering Committee on Databases to Support Nursing Practice has recognized three standardized nursing intervention classification systems. Because each of these classifications systems focuses on encoding informational abstractions of nursing actions, rather than providing a controlled vocabulary and compositional grammar from which informational concepts and abstractions can be constructed, the systems are necessary, but not sufficient, for representing what nurses do. In particular, computer based patient record systems focused on process understanding and process improvement will require atomic-level representations of nursing actions suitable for transformation into a variety of information abstractions, including, but not limited to, the abstractions contained in the three existing classification systems.

Nursing informatics: state of the science

The phenomena of interest in nursing informatics are nursing data, nursing information and nursing knowledge. The current state of knowledge related to these phenomena suggests four implications for the development of systems to support nursing. First, research has provided evidence that knowledge and experience is related to the quality of nursing assessment, diagnosis or clinical inference, and planning of nursing care, and also that knowledge is task-specific. Information technology can provide access to a variety of information resources, such as knowledge bases and decision support systems, to increase the level of knowledge of the nurse decision-maker. Second, structured patient assessment forms with linkages to knowledge bases of diagnoses have the potential to improve the quality of the patient assessment and the accuracy of the diagnosis or clinical inference. Third, studies on planning care have demonstrated the complexity of the task when a number of options are potentially appropriate. Model-based decision support applications such as decision analysis and multi-attribute utility theory can assist the clinicians and patients to analyse and compare the treatment alternatives in a systematic manner. Fourth, there is modest support for demonstrating the relationship between the process and outcomes of clinical decision making. Large databases built upon nursing data are needed to further examine this relationship.

Validity and reliability of standard terms and codes for patient care data

A set of standard terms and codes for patient care data was derived from care planning and documentation materials submitted by 9 hospitals. The set contained 329 terms for Patient Problems, 308 terms for Patient Outcomes, and 1261 terms for Patient Care Actions. Six of the hospitals participated in a test of validity and reliability of the standard terms and codes. Manual audits were conducted on 465 patient records from two services in each hospital. All auditors achieved acceptable accuracy in coding. The auditors identified 18,995 items in the patient records as representing statements of Patient Problems, Patient Outcomes, or Patient Care Actions. The standard terms and codes matched 99.1% of these items. Thus, for the services audited, the standard terms and codes provided a valid representation of the Patient Problems, Patient Outcomes, and Patient Care Actions in the patient records.